AT taken down this morning by DOS attack (updated)

American Thinker suffered a massive Denial of Service attack this morning, taking our websbite down for over three hours during peak traffic time. Thanks to the hard work of our tech consultsants (who have labored mightily over recent software upgrades), we are now back.

Thanks to all our readers for their patience. We are secure in the knowledge that we are making a difference when our enemies seek to silence us.

Thomas Lifson, editor

Update: Some details from our chief tech officer:

- From the magnitude of the attack, this is most likely a Distributed Denial of Service attack - which means that whoever initiated the attack did so by directing infected PCs from around the world to hit AT. It is very likely that people who own these computers do not know their machines were used for this purpose. We are right now in the process of combing through the IPs that accessed the site during the attack to determine any patterns - for instance if most of the requests were coming from a specific geographic location or a network. My hunch is that this will probably not tell us much, because in all likelihood these infected PCs are distributed randomly in various locations/networks.

- If the attacks were all coming from a specific set of IPs or networks - a simple Denial of Service (DOS) attack instead of a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS) - they probably would not be able to saturate our hosting providers bandwidth. It would also be easier to locate them.

Update: A former senior internet engineer at a major American corporation writes:

"I can tell you this was carefully planned weeks or months ago -- this sort of thing takeslots ofmoney, time, and organization. Sobering to say the least. Some AT articles must have pissed off multiple powerful constituents. When they can't fight your ideas, like school yard bully, they just start swinging at your face in frustration. "

American Thinker suffered a massive Denial of Service attack this morning, taking our websbite down for over three hours during peak traffic time. Thanks to the hard work of our tech consultsants (who have labored mightily over recent software upgrades), we are now back.

Thanks to all our readers for their patience. We are secure in the knowledge that we are making a difference when our enemies seek to silence us.

Thomas Lifson, editor

Update: Some details from our chief tech officer:

- From the magnitude of the attack, this is most likely a Distributed Denial of Service attack - which means that whoever initiated the attack did so by directing infected PCs from around the world to hit AT. It is very likely that people who own these computers do not know their machines were used for this purpose. We are right now in the process of combing through the IPs that accessed the site during the attack to determine any patterns - for instance if most of the requests were coming from a specific geographic location or a network. My hunch is that this will probably not tell us much, because in all likelihood these infected PCs are distributed randomly in various locations/networks.

- If the attacks were all coming from a specific set of IPs or networks - a simple Denial of Service (DOS) attack instead of a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS) - they probably would not be able to saturate our hosting providers bandwidth. It would also be easier to locate them.

Update: A former senior internet engineer at a major American corporation writes:

"I can tell you this was carefully planned weeks or months ago -- this sort of thing takeslots ofmoney, time, and organization. Sobering to say the least. Some AT articles must have pissed off multiple powerful constituents. When they can't fight your ideas, like school yard bully, they just start swinging at your face in frustration. "